Entertainment
'How I Met Your Mother' Finale Theories Include Death, Happy Endings, & Everything in Between
Since day one, How I Met Your Mother has been a comedy of mystery. Hell, the entire premise of the show is based on one. So it's no surprise that the Internet is chock full of theories about the sitcom: The mother is a stripper named Tracy! The mother is Barney's half-sister! They're going to pull a TIME and have the mother just be a giant mirror because the mother is you!
We've met the mother now, so most of those theories have been disproven. But show creators Craig Thomas and Carter Bays have hinted that they've still got a few tricks up their sleeves and that the series finale will be "heartbreaking." So naturally, there are more than a few theories about what will happen in the shows' final moments.
Here are some of the biggest ones to keep track of as we reach the end of the longest wedding weekend in history...
The Mother is Dead
This one is currently the most widely-spread theory and the most controversial (if you don’t believe me, ask my lovely Twitter death threat). It’d be a completely heartbreaking way to end the show, but it has solid reasoning to back it up: we’ve never seen her in flash-forwards, Ted’s speech in “The Time Travelers” seemed to suggest a kind of mourning, Jason Segel thinks it could happen, and it would make sense as an ending to the show.
Ted is Dying
How does this multi-camera sitcom have so many morbid theories? The speech from “The Time Travelers” can also be interpreted to mean that it’s not the mother that’s dying — Ted is. This would be another explanation for why Ted is spending so long telling his kids this story: he wants to spend time with them, and he wants to remember the mother before he dies.
Robin and Barney Don't Get a Happy Ending
There are many theories that allude to this. Of course, we saw in the first episode of last season that Robin gets some seriously cold feet before her wedding to Barney. These might just be run-of-the-mill wedding day jitters, or they might be more serious… especially seeing that, as one fan pointed out, neither Barney nor Robin are wearing a wedding ring in the flash forward in “The Exploding Meatball.”
Robin and Ted End Up Together
Many fans of How I Met Your Mother have had a hard time letting Robin go as the mother. So of course, many of the show’s theories end with Robin and Ted getting back together: Barney dies, Barney and Robin don’t get married or don’t stay married, the mother dies, etc. And hey, that first season fake-out with Robin was pretty convincing, so who knows… these fans might just have their wish come true after all.
Robin Has Already Met the Mother
Okay, after all the theories of death and breakups, here’s one that’s actually pretty sweet: Robin has already met the mother. As we’ve seen this season, the mother has already had some significant encounters with Lily, Marshall, and Barney, but the one person that we have yet to see her meet is Robin. And as a fan pointed out on Reddit, she and Robin have both worn the same necklace. Could Robin’s necklace be a present from the mother?
